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Remember environmental cues can only be given if actual pieces of environment are interacted with.
The door was not intact but at some point players decided to interpret that it was based on other player's descriptions of it. As with all interactive clues, if there had been leads from the door an interactive message would have been sent.

I don't like sending them in pm in mine. I just put them up and I scold the player if they aren't present and act on it.

Choices are a big part of ***. What a player chooses to share or how they decide to interpret a clue they then share can affect the entire game.
Whether or not other players then try to actively investigate those environmental clues themself is also their choice.

This mechanic can only be accomplished through pm prompts, to avoid out right statements of what has or hasn't been found. (Obviously NPC interacts are the exception to this rule, but NPC are neither as useful or coherent as potential environmental clues)

This way, players literally reap the time and effort and follow up on clues they put into this game (barring, of course, Harvest Touched interferences which was already mentioned above as being an unbalanced part of this BETA) and cannot coast through on the discoveries of others just by skimming mod posts.

Good game, everyone! I loved reading about Canker and its twisted inhabitants!

Okay, so here's a few of my suggestions!

1: Players need to know how many clues are in an area. A lot of the time, I felt like I was floundering around without any sort of direction, and I'm assuming a lot of people also felt that way. Not to mention that players can keep clues to themselves if they want to, which can hamper a lot of the attempts to find the clues we need. If players know the number of clues around, we can keep track of who's gone where and how many clues have been given and investigate accordingly.

2: You already figured out the harvest touched had too much of an advantage, but I'd also say that we need more clues about who they are. in the later stages of the game, I was frantically trying to figure it out, but there was just not a lot of clues available to me. to that end, I'd like to suggest-

-Reducing the number of harvest touched, as being killed off by twos (or more, depending on how inactive people are) really quickly drops the number of non harvest characters.

-Abolishing the role of the Harvest Touched altogether, because we not only have to try to find out who they are, and vote on who to kill, but also figure out what's going on with the Harvestman, as even if we manage to get rid of all the other harvest touched, we'll all get screwed over in the end if we don't figure out what's up with the harvestman. While it's fun to be on the bad side, that's way too much stuff to keep track of. Make the harvestman attack two dragons an hour in return.

-Harvest Touched can only kill every other hour. This is one I would genuinely recommend above the other two suggestions, as it balances out both the speed which normal dragons are being killed at and gives even non-item holding normals a chance to contribute.

3. Items need to be reworked. I can't speak for anyone else, but I had the firestarter and I did not want to use it unless I got killed or I absolutely needed to because of the super heavy penalty associated with it. For the firestarter, I'd much rather have it be a non-lethal trap that reveals what a dragon's role is (which is common in most mafia-esc games!) that lures the harvestman to your location with increased use than killing a player off (but if you guessed wrong, whoops three players will die every hour[/i]), and I feel like the atmosphere of secrecy that's meant to be cultivated went a long way in people not using their items, especially in regards to the tattered parchment. There are heavy penalties associated with revealing your item (since you've made it clear other dragons will then be able to decide when they use it), so there was absolutely no way two people were going to reveal they had the parchment and use it together. A lot of the items have heavy drawbacks that make people not want to use them, and this is a detriment to your game and the plot you want to tell. Suggestions I have:

-Reduce penalties. As I mentioned before, I didn't want to use my item for fear of my penalty, and people probably didn't want to use theirs due to their penalties. Instead, make it either that items are 1-2 use only or item usage meaning that you can't participate in that hour's clue gathering. this can be used in conjunction with-

-Remove clue generating items. This is a big one, but you should be streamlining any clue gathering and information about the harvestman into the hourly searches. We shouldn't need the items to give us more information, as that not only relies on people giving up information (and revealing their item because where are they getting this info out of the blue from?) but also on if they're active or not. Make items purely relate to protecting from harvest attacks / revealing roles / immunity to harvest attacks / have an item that when used forces an npc to answer a question truthfully one time only / etc.

This is all I can think of off the top of my head, but if you'd like to chat with me about any of them, feel free! I have some experience participating in more clue based games so I can genuinely offer advice in that area.

@Eskiwen

Thank you so, so much for the all the in depth feedback. A lot of of what you mentioned has made an appearance in my notes and here are a few changes that are already being made to gameplay:

--I definitely already have completely revised the abilities of the Harvest Touched, reducing Harvest Touched kills to 4 per whole game (and only every third hour,). I feel like a lot of my model for Harvest Touched players was based in traditional Mafia games which, I came to realize, *** is very, very different from.

--The Firestarter, though it remains a lethal item, does not bar the user from collecting clues, even if it has been used on an innocent dragon. And is subject to further revision regarding Angry Spirit Penalties, etc, etc.

--Item penalties have been greatly reduced or scrapped almost altogether and new items are in the works. While some items will still be used to gather clues, there will be more items focused on protection or Harvest Touched detection.

--For my second attempt at this, I still want to keep a level of distrust between characters-- and keep the value of keeping your item secret-- intact. Mostly to avoid role claiming. But, different types of clues can be discovered through environmental areas-- meaning clever players can still hide what their item is even if they choose to share their clues with the group.

--Clue gathering is definitely something that needs a lot of revision but I'm currently trying to figure out a way to implement it without outright saying how many clues are in an area-- Especially since interacting with environmental elements multiple times can actually generate more clues, etc, etc.
At this point I'm either working on descriptive leading (like bolding environmental areas that will 100% reveal clues or amping up how specifically certain areas/objects are described) or presenting the group with a general number like "This Area Contains 9-15 Clues", with the highest number containing clues that need very specific actions to reveal them and the lowest number being the amount of easily accessed clues.

Once again, thank you for the feedback! I will definitely follow up with you for more/on further revisions, as this was incredibly helpful.

(Also, what clue gathering games have you been a part of? I'm always looking for inspiration/guidance and I'd loved to read them if you have any links handy :}} )

The general number is what I was talking about, specifically re: clues. It's VERY helpful to know the roundabouts of how many clues can be found in an area, so we can know we didn't miss anything in particular. another thing to keep in mind is once all the clues are discovered in an area, it'd be helpful to note that in bold narration (aka 'It feels like you won't find anything in here, no matter how hard you search' to let players know they've found everything they can.

I enjoy the other tweaking you're doing! The way the game is being set up definitely feels more like what I'm used to, aka a 'murdergame'. I used to play on dreamwidth rp, and these games are short affairs that are closed off to a specific amount of players, and they basically revolve around finding clues in the area about their situation and their captor, along with having a trial done every week when someone ends up dead. A lot of the clues about the captor/situation actually comes from the investigation the dead players do. It's much longer than this one (meant to play through WEEKS of gameplay). *** is a different sort of game, yes, but it might help you to look through and see how a purely clue-based game does in order to make your game better!

Here's a link to a popular one, Trustfell: https://trustfell.dreamwidth.org/profile

oh, and please don't comment on the stuff! it's specifically meant for the game! you could probably contact the mods if you'd like to get tips.

I really liked the read list by ceris player
I mean, I thought all of that, but I am garbage with words XD

@SheepyPeanut

Glad you enjoyed it. I was sad to see your girl go so early, but I'll definitely give you a ping when the revised version of this is up.


@Eskiwen

Oh and clearer prompts are definitely an element that needs to be tweaked. Thanks again for the all the suggestions.

Also, I actually had no idea there was a whole genre for this-- I mean, obviously I didn't assume I was the first person to do it or anything, but I didn't know there were a lot of other games like this. I'll definitely have to check them out and vicariously see what works, what players enjoy, ect.
Thank you so much again, this has all been really helpful :}}

(and don't worry, i'll just be a rapidly note taking fly on the wall... but thanks for the heads up just the same)


@TheElfDruid

Oooh. Thanks for the rec, m8. Another thing I need to add to my list. :}}